Cast Your Phantoms
by Huinari
Summary: As a Phantomhive, Francis didn't quite feel right. It wasn't that she didn't love her family - it was just that she didn't fit in. Francis-centric.


Head-canon, in that Francis was more of a 'light' person and didn't do well in the 'darkness'. As well as other details.

Written/published when Kuroshitsuji had up to ch. 97.

* * *

George Phantomhive was a man who appeared older than he actually was, with blond hair streaked silver and wrinkles set in his handsome but gruff face. He was tall and powerfully built, and always cast a presence in the room he stood in, no matter who was with him. His quiet charisma and reticent charm, though, didn't come from any of those but his way of listening.

She loved her father, she truly did. In the few moments she spent with him, he was quiet but witty, stoic but alive.

When she and Vincent sat in the parlour, eating cake and drinking tea, he would sometimes join them, sitting on the chair he favourite. While their mother bantered and told stories to make one weep with laughter, their father sat to the side and smiled, watching over them like a lookout, or a watchdog. Looking to protect them, to love them from afar at his station.

When he spoke they were words precious, but not just because they were given out sparingly. He was kind to them, but he didn't spoil them. He expected great things from the two of them, but only the deeds he knew they could accomplish. He saw them for their true value; he loved them despite their faults.

This was the father she knew best. The father who was quiet, but always listened and remembered. The father who cared to keep in his heart the details of a young girl wanting to fence, and buying her custom made swords for her birthday six months later.

But there was another side to father. Sometimes he wouldn't join them in meals. Sometimes he would lock himself up in his study, or in the pool room with his associates. Mother would lead them away when that happened, and they would study or play games with her.

Francis knew what he did, what he was for this country. Her earliest memory was hiding in one of the mansion's secret rooms with Vincent, and then being embraced by their sweaty mother an eternity later. Her parents didn't believe in hiding what they were, and so from a young age she and Vincent had been taught how to defend themselves – how to kill, how to read someone.

He tried so hard to hide it around them, his children, but sometimes the darkness was visible. Sometimes, he came home, rubbing at his hands as if he had stains of blood only he could see. Sometimes, he made sure that she and Vincent were safe, asking repeatedly if anything had happened to them. Sometimes, he was wrapped in bandages and helped through the doors by Tanaka.

Sometimes his eyes were darker than the moonless night sky and he looked so tired.

Sometimes he scared Francis. And it shamed her, to be afraid of her father, and so she hid it as best as she could.

* * *

Francis and Vincent didn't look alike. Where Vincent was delicate and dark-haired, Francis was handsome and blonde, with one frontal curl refusing to behave. Vincent went after their mother, and Francis their father.

It wasn't just in their appearances. Vincent loved to read as he relaxed, and played the violin beautifully. He had a knack for shifting his voice into the soothing, convincing tone their mother could use so well, and he had an odd sense of humour, though he hid it well just as Claudia Phantomhive did.

Francis couldn't play a violin without it screeching like a tortured cat. She was blunt and told things as she saw them, and the thought of being late made her irritated. She was good at fencing and at keeping a strict face.

Vincent called the last trait 'intimidating the weak-hearted' and often playfully accused her of scaring him. For that she always made sure to beat him at fencing.

Still, he was her younger brother, and she'd always seen it her duty as an older sibling to look after him, to protect him. Despite knowing him and his mischievous heart, she had somehow convinced herself that he needed her protection. In her mind's eye, he had been painted as a small, innocent child.

The day an assassin somehow snuck past their servants and ran into the library where they'd been reading, Francis froze in surprise. It was the first time that they were faced with an actual threat. This wasn't Tanaka teaching them the weak points and joints of a body, or their father demonstrating a fencing technique, or even their mother and lessons on where a poisoned needle would be most effective.

This was a killer. And they were in danger.

One second after the doors of the Phantomhive library had slammed open, Francis had looked up, and she had frozen in surprise as her brain struggled to match what it was processing with all the training from before.

Two seconds. Her mouth opened, her vocal cords unlocked as she began shouting like she'd been told to do. She reached for her blades instinctively, searching for their comforting presence only to realize that they weren't on her.

Three seconds. She was ready to fight him herself – she had the poisoned needles and her teachings, she could defend herself and protect Vincent – when there was the sound of a click.

Four seconds. The assassin was five yards away from them when a gunshot thundered in the room, and the assassin fell to the ground, a small, round, bloody hole in the middle of his forehead.

Francis looked back. Vincent stood, one hand raised holding a revolver. He looked pale, but his hands were calm and steady as he slowly put the gun down on the shelf he was next to.

She swept him up in a hug. He never let out a sound.

That was the first time. But when it happened again – and two of their maids died defending the mansion – he was calm as he took out two assassins on his own. Calm, collected, relaxed, almost.

Francis killed a man for the first time that night. She, too, had fired a gun, and it had hit the man in the neck, ripping his arteries and veins and releasing his lifeblood. He didn't die immediately, and so she watched from her corner as he shuddered and twitched into the stillness of death.

It was too easy to take a life. She found that she preferred her swords because then, at least, the consequences of causing one's death felt like it was more on her hands. It made her feel that death came at an expensive cost, that the taking of a life was not something cheap and as easy as pulling a trigger. She swung the sword. She felt it penetrate and slice at flesh, muscle and bone. She felt the strain on her arms, the tug at her core. She had to dodge and move on her legs, and one slip of her feet would mean a bad ending for her.

Taking a life, she thought, wasn't easier with swords. But it made it easier to sleep at night in a way.

When she told this to Vincent, he advised that she not hold a scumbag's life over her own.

Francis realized that her brother, while nearly two years younger than her, was more cynical than her in some aspects. More experienced in dealing with the shadows of the world.

Intimidating the weak-hearted. Right. As if he had ever truly been intimidated by her, or weak-hearted. Siblings they were, but they weren't very like each other.

* * *

The last illusion to be destroyed was the one her mother had cast.

Francis knew her mother was capable of a lot of things. No one told stories as well as she did; no one read more books than she did; no one – who was a lady – kicked the servants out of the kitchen every fortnight to cook for everyone in the mansion, servants included; no one laughed like she did when the answer to a riddle was revealed.

Her mother always appeared so young and innocent, so delicate and doll-like. She was in her early thirties, but looked years younger than she was. Whenever she appeared in public with her father, who was not only eight years her senior but looked older than he was, her mother could have been mistaken for a mistress rather than his legal wife and lady because of the age gap in their appearances.

Like Vincent, it was hard to think of her mother as someone in the Phantomhive family even as she learned things from her, like how to concoct poison during afternoon tea with nothing but the beverages and snacks offered, or what reactions a man gave to questions if he was guilty.

In Claudia Phantomhive's case, the assumption was even greater. She hadn't been born a Phantomhive, but married into the family. She was an integral part of the household, but not of its duties and connections to the Underworld.

One day, she accompanied her mother to the circus. Vincent had refused to go, on the grounds that he had a new book to read, but their mother had insisted that someone come with her.

After a coin was flipped, Francis had been forced into the duty of making sure that her mother didn't get lost or into trouble. Sometimes their mother acted like a young girl, and was excited for the oddest things. Francis wasn't sure what her married life would look like, with her being an unorthodox lady, but she was sure that she would be prepared to look after a daughter, even at the age of fourteen.

"I don't understand why you like circuses," she sighed as they walked past the colourful tents. "You hate clowns."

"I do," her mother agreed. She had gasped when the jokers had run around the audience, and had shrunken into herself when one approached her with a flower. "They scare me. But I love the animals, even if they're imprisoned. I just don't like clowns."

"Well," Francis murmured under her breath as she looked ahead and caught sight of the bright clothes. "One happens to be coming along right now. What will you do?"

Her mother only smiled down at her. "Then I'm afraid you'll have to protect me from the-"

The brightly-clothed man with the painted face reached into his pocket and drew something that glinted metallically in the light from a lamp. Her mother's smile vanished, and something else took over entirely. It was harsh, cold, calculating, unforgiving, and not her mother's beautiful, delicate and doll-like face at all.

The harlequin drew a dagger; her mother's blade was faster, and he went down, fingers loosening around the hilt as the knife buried itself in his neck.

Before the man's body even fell to the ground, her mother had enveloped her in an embrace to hide her sight.

"Claudia," muttered her father's voice, and she struggled to see out of her mother's embrace. What was father doing here? He was off on Watchdog business –

"Mother, leave with Francis," urged a different voice. Vincent's voice, but he was supposed to be home reading and lounging around lazily in his room, snacking on –

Oh. _Oh_.

Her mother's thin, elegant fingers, delicate like the rest of her, were like iron clamps around her forearm. The rings she wore – the ones that could make a poisoned spike pop out if she twisted the jewels – dug into her skin. Francis didn't feel the pain.

They made it to the carriage, where Tanaka helped both of them into the carriage. Her mother's eyes remained sharp and alert throughout the way home.

It unsettled her to know that her mother's carefree laughter and personality could all be wiped away in an instant like face paint.

* * *

It wasn't that Francis herself wasn't capable of terrible things. The potential for ruin and destruction, to cause harms and injury, lay in everyone. That was the first lesson she'd learned as a Phantomhive, and she knew it to be true as she knew the sky to be blue.

No, it wasn't that her family was capable of terrible, dark things that unsettled her. It was the masks they wore, the facades they maintained. How they were like two different people in the same body, sharing thoughts and surfacing when the situations called for it.

It wasn't that she didn't love them. She loved them, she loved them so much. They knew each other, they talked, they felt each other's pains and shared their sorrows. They were a family, and not just in blood.

It was simply that her very nature was not fit to be a phantom in the dark, shifting shapes to survive amongst the shades and the creatures of the night. She was one person, Francis Phantomhive. She held honour, truth, valor and chivalry above all.

Sometimes the Phantomhives ignored those values. It was for the greater good, but each time the values were set aside she felt like two forces tugged from within her, seeking to go down two opposite paths and threatening to rip her to shreds in their fight, just as she _witnessed_ the breach. Who was she if she couldn't uphold those codes she held in her heart? What was she if she couldn't be one of her family?

For a long time she wondered deeply.

* * *

A few years after her mother died, Francis met a man. He was younger than her, but like her father had the quality of appearing older than he was, carrying charisma and the impression of surefooted experience in the way he carried himself. There was no swagger, but instead a surety in himself. A certainty in what he believed in, and a heart strong enough to not only house the values he treasured but to protect them.

And somehow, he fell in love with her, even after their not-quite-orthodox first meeting.

When she married Alexis Leon Midford, who was two years younger than her, and exchanged the Phantomhive name for the Midford crest, she put herself to peace. She was who she was – and she had never been able to swim in the shadows.

* * *

AN: So apparently this is what happens when I try to write two stories with Sieglinde/Edward and a Francis backstory featuring her mother and hints of Undertaker/Claudia at the same time. I swear they're coming.


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